- Corpses remain in family homes and on the street in Guayaquil, Ecuador, as authorities are overburdened with a collection of the bodies of dead, several news agencies reported.
- The city is the epicenter of Ecuador's coronavirus outbreak.
- It's very likely that the country has far more cases than the 3,300 it's officially reported.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Bodies of people who died presumably from the novel coronavirus remain in family homes and line the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, several news agencies reported.
The city of almost 3 million people is now an epicenter of the outbreak in the South American country, The Washington Post reported.
According to CNN, it's not known how many of those who died actually died from COVID-19, and some in the city have said their family members died with symptoms attributed to the diseases but many have not been tested.
The Wall Street Journal reported that one man's body was left in the living room of his house for four days after he died. The family of Gerardo Ibarra, who was 72 years old, couldn't find anyone to take his body. Emergency services and funeral homes were overburdened with cases.
Ibarra was taken to the hospital after he had trouble breathing and suspected he may have caught the new coronavirus. A doctor told his family that the hospital didn't have room for him, and the man died in his home, The Journal reported.
Almost 70% of the country's coronavirus cases are in the region of Guayas where Guayaquil is located, The Journal reported.
The Post reported that a neighbor Rosangelys Valdiviezo passed by while walking on the street now lays dead in front of his house.
"The body was wrapped in a plastic tarp, swollen, already attracting flies," The Post wrote.
Valdiviezo, a seafood worker from Venezuelan told The Post the body was there for six days.
"I am very afraid. I'm terrified of dying so far from home," he told The Post.
Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno said that the official statistics from the country are likely wrong, and the toll of the virus is likely much higher, according to The Journal.
As of Friday, the country's official count is more than 3,300 people infected and 145 deaths.
According to The Journal, Moreno said, "tens of thousands of infected people and hundreds of lives cut short."
Additionally, in Guayaquil, he said 150 bodies who died from the pandemic have been picked up. A few days ago that number was only 30.
"It's a war zone," Enrique Boloña Gilbert, a doctor in a private hospital told The Journal.
The outbreak in the city likely escalated after school vacations when locals returned from vacations in Europe in February or March, Guayaquil Mayor Cynthia Viteri, who tested positive for the virus told The Journal.
According to CNN, videos obtained by news agencies show what's happening in the streets.
One video obtained by Reuters on March 30 showed Fernando Espana explaining that his family has been waiting for five days for authorities to pick up the corpse of a family member.
"We are tired of calling 911 and the only thing they tell us is to wait, they are working to solve this," Espana said in the video, which showed a "black plastic-wrapped shape inside the home, with two fans blowing on it."
Rosa Romero told Reuters that her husband, Bolivar Reyes, 43, a juice merchant died from COVID-19 symptoms but was unable to be tested. His corpse stayed in her home for at least a day before it was picked up since crews couldn't keep up with the death toll and collection.
"They told me to be patient, that they hadn't been able to arrive because they only had a single vehicle that needed to go to a number of places," Romero told Reuters. "The neighbors told me that if I didn't get rid of (the remains), they were going to burn down my house."
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Why bidets are better than buying countless rolls of toilet paper